


Full of Sound and Fury

by Taelle



Category: Hilary Tamar Mysteries - Sarah Caudwell
Genre: Gen, destruction of property, vampire mythology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:02:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Taelle/pseuds/Taelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A true Scholar will stay detached even under a vampiric attack.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full of Sound and Fury

**Author's Note:**

  * For [celli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/gifts).



> I don't really like zombies: I hope this will do instead.

This short account, I must regretfully note, will never see the light of the day – and the printing presses; the events it describes might seem a trifle too fantastic for minds not sufficiently broad to accept that the world might not be as placid and understandable as they are used to imagining (also, my young friend Selena informs me that she most emphatically objects to a publication which would portray her behaving in so violent a manner, as she fears this might make solicitors fearful of approaching her). Of course, a Scholar’s mind ought to rise higher than such petty concerns; I must, however, admit that I am too human to dismiss them – and also that this story lacks a conclusion that would demonstrate the benefits of a true scientific method. As it is, I am writing this out mostly as a small memoir, which would, perhaps, one day be of use to Scholars of another day… I dare to hope that with skillful rendition it could become more than just a strange anecdote.  
  
This peculiar adventure of mine began in late autumn, when I was once again in London on a research trip. There were things in the Public Record Office which required my close attention (and, of course, the Bursar’s latest attempts at upsetting a Scholar’s serene life made this trip that much more pleasant). However, being much in favour of a harmonious life and knowing how friendships enriched even the finest mind, I could not refuse an invitation to Corkscrew. My young friends apparently planned a small welcome party for my old pupil Timothy Shepherd who was that day to return from a long business trip to USA.  
Upon my arrival I was pleasantly surprised to see next to Selena and Ragwort my young colleague Sebastian Verity: while seeing him in Selena’s company was not strange in the slightest, I was not aware that he intended to be in London today.  
“I could not miss this antiquities exhibition,” he told me. “It’s in this small gallery called Rayne’s, you probably haven’t heard of it – I was suspecting that the so-called “artifacts of mystery” would turn out to be a fake, but they are most certainly of Ancient Greek origin, though I am not an archeologist or an art historian to tell you their precise purpose. But the legends attached to them, ah, the legends… You have, of course, heard about the Lamia–“  
“Do you want more wine, Hilary?” Selena interrupted him, and something told me that she most likely had heard all about the Lamia already – and this myth is one that women seldom find endearing.  
The next ten minutes or so were spent in a pleasant routine of discussing whether the wine already present at the table should be enough for all of us – naturally, Julia had not yet arrived, and neither had Cantrip, though we expected the gentleman to appear earlier than the lady, the disadvantage of his Cambridge education being no match to her talent of getting lost, detained or simply wandering even in the most familiar places.  
  
However, we were wrong.  
Julia’s arrival was heralded by noise – not that this was by itself surprising, but the noise was rather more than could be expected from dropping a bag or a parcel or even overturning a chair. I was doubtful that Julia would be overturning tables left and right – it would have required a bit too much of a concentrated effort.  
The door to the outer room of the Corkscrew was half-open, and it would not allow us to see what was going on there, but in the next moment this door flew open with a bang, and Julia stumbled through, pursued by a man definitely not of her own choice – too bulky and, from what I could see, possessed of a particularly ugly profile.  
And, as Selena was getting up, ready to the rescue, he grabbed Julia's shoulder and made a clear, if not very successful, attempt to bite her neck. Which failed mainly because at that moment Julia managed to get entangled with a chair and not as much fell as tumbled forward, landing near our table. Her pursuer immediately tried to get her up, presumably to continue towards his goal, but then the maître d'hôtel, appearing in the open doorway, hit him on the head with a heavy cane.  
Now that was, to an experienced observer, much more surprising than a man trying to bite Julia’s neck. However, since we could now hear and see the other room more clearly, I immediately noticed the level of yelling and banging out there. Perhaps it was enough to drive even such a personage as the maître d'hôtel to be uncommonly discourteous to guests.  
Meanwhile Julia, already up and seated at our table, was restoring her nerves with wine. We would definitely need at least one more bottle, I noted – but now, perhaps, the staff was too busy.  
“Julia,” Ragwort said coolly, “what did you manage to get yourself into?”  
“Nothing,” Julia answered hotly, “absolutely nothing! Even such a noble-minded person as you would hardly consider it my fault that as I was getting here, I went past a group of people deeply involved in neck-kissing. While it is generally a pleasurable occupation, I am sure I did not give them any reason to think that I was so intensely interested as to wish to join their little club.”  
“Aha,” I said, “this is most curious; perhaps you were right, Sebastian, in your desire to discuss Lamia.”  
“Vampires, Hilary?” Ragwort said with utmost surprise. “Do you really believe–“  
“Ah, my dear Ragwort,” I answered readily, “you should realize that it's not my beliefs that matter in this case, but those of Julia's attacker, and he was clearly modelling himself on such a pattern–"  
  
But before I could expand on possible connection between Sebastian’s exhibition and Julia’s neck-kissing "club", two more strangers rushed in, one of them throwing to the side the maître d'hôtel, who has just finished righting to his satisfaction the chair Julia had kicked.  
These two, however, seemed to have no previous acquaintance with Julia, as, instead of pursuing her, they tried to grab a lady from the other occupied table in the room. This pair, alas, was no luckier, for they were stopped: not by the maître d'hôtel this time, for he was on the floor, apparently having hit the table as he fell, but by none other than our young friend Michael Cantrip, using a chair. Not the one, I am pleased to note, that the maître d'hôtel took such trouble to right.  
“What's this all about?” Cantrip asked, standing over the fallen foe. “I don't remember that there were ever such brawls in good old Corkscrew.” I thought he sounded rather pleased, though.  
Ragwort meanwhile was saying something about police, and even made a move to go and call them – or, perhaps, to assist the maître d'hôtel in doing so. However, he was checked in his attempt by several people grappling at each other, who managed to tumble through the door at this very moment. Some of them were evidently interested in the neck-biting activity; some were very emphatically against it.  
“Perhaps,” I said to Sebastian, “these gentlemen are modeling themselves more on the later Eastern European legend – I remember the Greek ones being more about nightly visits and slow drawing of life forces than brawls in wine bars.”  
One of the brawlers made an attempt to lunge at the maître d'hôtel, who was still on the floor - and, to my surprise, it was Ragwort who unhesitatingly and neatly knocked him down with a chair.  
The chair broke, and I peered at Ragwort, trying to detect some traces of mortification. The brawling group also broke into several directions, a couple of them heading in our direction.  
“Perhaps I should also–“ Sebastian said, his voice a little troubled. At this very moment Selena promptly and even, if I am permitted to say so, quite expertly dispatched an unwise attacker through a timely use of a chair leg. The maître d'hôtel, rousing himself from the floor near her, groaned, his eyes on the mutilated furniture. Sebastian paused in his movement.  
“You may, if you feel the need to do so,” I said, being aware that even in Sebastian, for all his fine mind, a temporary rush of emotion often worked as a distraction from the scholar's first duty, that of observation. Luckily, the duty of noting and recording the curious events of this evening – perhaps I should even say, of this night, to be more precise – was not solely left to him. “I, however, am certain that I will be more useful remaining here to observe, as a scholar ought.” I hoped that a note of reproach which crept into my voice was not severe enough to disturb him.  
“Quite true!” Cantrip panted from nearby, clearly aiming to rush at a new intruder who at this very moment got through the partially blocked doorway. “Not sporty at all, our Hilary!” Even the best available company, I’m afraid, could not get rid of the regrettable effects of the other university out of Cantrip.  
  
Perhaps Sebastian’s base instincts still would have won, and he would have joined the fight, except that several outbreaks of furniture-destroying altercations practically blocked the approaches to the table and, consequently, deprived him of an opportunity to leave it.  
“They seem to be less vulnerable to direct force, but whether this is more just than a coincidence, I cannot say,” I noted. “Are they still trying their neck-biting?”  
“Most certainly, but they are not particulary successful. Perhaps their teeth aren’t good enough?” Sebastian did not seem convinced by his own attempt at frivolity.  
“For now they seem to be the ones losing blood,” I noted. “Look at Julia!”  
Everyone was looking at Julia, for she just managed to down three attackers at once by stumbling strategically – or in a way that looked strategical enough to those who did not know her. One of the attackers bloodied his own nose against a table as he fell.  
“None of the Ancient Greek prototypes were noted for attacks on women,” Sebastian said, his voice full of regret of a scholar dismissing a favorite theory. “These, however, pretty much started with Julia, which means we should stick with South European origins for them. If we do agree to consider them vampiric at all.”  
“Sticks will do just fine!” Cantrip exclaimed, running back towards the table to pick a broken chair. “Want a nice sharp chair leg?”  
Sebastian made a movement to take it, but at that moment one of the beings of disputed origin rushed at our table with clear intent to harm. As I was at that moment trying to open the last bottle, I must admit to a wholly unscientific and instinctive reaction: intending to wave it away (and being fairly certain that our table contained nothing of interest to it), I struck it with the bottle. To my deep regret, the bottle broke and the wine splashed out needlessly. The vampire managed to get wounded and stumbled away with a scream.  
“Hilary, how could you!” Cantrip exclaimed, staring at the spilt wine, and for once I was of one mind with him. This was getting unpleasant and wholly unsuitable for a truly scholarly approach. Violence reigned all around us, and some of my friends were thoroughly embroiled in it (not Ragwort, who, disapproving and almost immaculate, dedicated himself to dragging noncombatants away). I saw no way to prove or disprove without undue heroics the vampiric origin of our attackers. And I had no more wine.  
  
And then everything stopped.  
The so-called vampires froze in place (one of them coming right into Selena’s farewell kick), paused and then slowly and a bit dreamily wandered out of the room. We heard police sirens approaching. Cantrip sighed in almost-disappointment, Ragwort almost sighed in satisfaction.  
The door to the outer room opened again, and in walked Timothy Shepherd.  
His appearance in no way suggested any possible involvement in a fight; he looked as if he was rather pleased with himself, even if it took a trained observer to note that. And from the room behind him we could only hear peaceful activity.  
“Timothy!” we all exclaimed. “Do you know what’s been going on?” That last was from Selena, direct as usual.  
“An outbreak of cult-related violence, they say” he answered smoothly, instantly. “The Rayne gallery was not careful in hiring people for promotion activities, so they got people who were inclined to take their exhibits for religious artefact. I am told the Council had to close the exhibition for time being.”  
“The Council?” Julia asked curiously. “Do you mean the Council for Culture?”  
“Ah, yes, the Council for Culture,” Timothy said emphatically. “That’s exactly what I meant. But let's talk after I have some food - and wine. Shall we move to Guido's? The Corkscrew is likely to be closed for repairs for the next couple of days…”  
And so it was – but the Rayne gallery, which I visited the next day, turned out to be closed in a far more permanent way. The official consensus was that the owners did not want to pay the damages; however, no source I could find, including Timothy, who pleaded almost total ignorance about on the subject of antiquities and anything related to them, could tell me what happened to the exhibits.  
In two days unavoidable duties called me back to Oxford, and I had to leave the matter at this unsatisfactory end – worthy of this strange little tale at best, and not enough for a proper study. Cantrip, who read parts of this over my shoulder, tells me I could develop a fine and stirring way of describing violent activities, if I so wished; I, however, put my trust in an old-fashioned scholarly way of treating such matters. Study my mistakes, oh my casual reader. Learn from my imperfect detachment. And let yourself to be guided by the thirst for knowledge.  
  
 _Later addition, scribbled at the end of the typed manuscript:_  
Speaking of thirst: there's a letter from Julia in today's post, and she tells me that Corkscrew is back in business. And I have yet to question Timothy in more detail about that Council of his: I feel the need to get back to London and to Truth, awaiting a Scholar at the end of the road.


End file.
